Tuesday, October 30, 2007

What's on TV

Photo by Flickr user JasonRogers used under a Creative Commons license.


The NBA Season is now literally hours away (not like last time) and astute fans might have noticed over the years tht certain teams receive more national exposure than others. Here's a list of all of the teams ranked by how many times they are on national TV. Note that by this I mean times that they are on ABC, ESPN, ESPN2, and TNT. I ignore NBATV because it isn't widely available across cable providers and also WGN, though we all get it, because that would skew the results.

Here we go:

1. Los Angeles Lakers - 24
1. Miami Heat - 24
1. Phoenix Suns - 24
4. Cleveland Cavaliers - 23
4. Dallas Mavericks - 23
4. San Antonio Spurs - 23
7. Chicago Bulls - 21
8. Denver Nuggets - 15
8. Detroit Pistons - 15
10. Houston Rockets - 14
11. Portland Trailblazers - 11
11. Golden State Warriors - 11
13. Boston Celtics -10
14. Washington Wizards - 9
15. Seattle Supersonics - 8
16. Utah Jazz - 7
17. LA Clippers - 5
17. New Jersey Nets - 5
19. New York Knicks - 3
20. Orlando Magic - 2
20. Toronto Raptors - 2
22. Charlotte Bobcats - 1
22. Memphis Grizzlies - 1
22. Milwaukee Bucks - 1
22. Minnesota Timberwolves - 1
22. New Orleans Hornets - 1
22. Sacramento Kings - 1
28. Atlanta Hawks - 0
28. Indiana Pacers - 0
28. Philadelphia 76ers - 0

I've been trying to look for patterns in this and frankly I can't really find any. First, I thought that it would be good teams that got more exposure, but then we have Utah and Toronto at 16 and 20 respectively while Portland is at 11. Next, I thought the superstar appeal might have something to do with it, but the Celtics and Magic, two teams hoarding stars, are at 13 and 20. I've gone through PPG and Point Differential and average home game attendance and city population, but nothing seems to give a good fit. Try to make some sense out of it.

3 comments:

The Review Chick said...

It's all about big television markets for some of the teams. Los Angeles, Miami, Chicago to name a few. Then you have the "fun" teams to watch, those include the "star power games" in Cleveland, Dallas, Phoenix, SAntonio.

The ones that puzzle me are the Celtics (after the KG trade they should be on more) and the young teams in Orlando, Portland and Seattle.

Thanks for sharing this with us!

Loren said...

Yeah I thought they'd be playing up the GODE-KD rivalry more a la Lebron-Carmelo, but it's ok now because both are injured to start the season (GODE for all of it). I don't really see Brandon Roy and Lamarcus Aldridge drawing a crowd even though they are stars of the future.

I feel like with Pierce, Allen and KG, the Celtics are pretty stacked in terms of star power and Dwight Howard is turning into a mini-Shaq (it feels werid to call D a mini anything), so those were the ones that confused me too.

Loren said...

I feel like the Rockets have super television appeal also with TMac and Yao. I remember a couple years ago they were on Nat TV 30 times. But now they are middle of the pack.